


Hope

by The_MoonBear



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Miscarriage, Past Abuse, alright so basically Finnick lives but Annie dies, and Gale dies but Prim lives, and I killed Katniss' mom too, it's 2020 I should be writing happier stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:28:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23465431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_MoonBear/pseuds/The_MoonBear
Summary: After losing Gale and her mother in the bombing that helped winning the war, Katniss gets to go home with a little sister that was forced to grow too fast in the middle of a war she never asked for. She didn't count on Finnick Odair going back to district 12 with them, but then again, she never counted on going back at all. Now they all get to live with their ghosts.A retelling of the ending with a few twists here and there.
Relationships: Finnick Odair/Primrose Everdeen, Katniss Everdeen/Peeta Mellark
Comments: 7
Kudos: 41





	Hope

The Capitol doctor who's taking me through endless rows of dead rebels and Capitol citizens sounds a lot like a wise crow. Not that it bothers me at all. I feel unable to pass judgement on anything being good or bad as devastation washes over me like a cold wave, dragging my broken parts and leaving me empty. But their voice sounds like a wise crow, slow and hollow, and I focus on that.

I'm not sure of what they're saying. I keep distracting wondering if the holographic feathers framing their face grow naturally.

We get to a row where ten or so rebels lie heaped next to one another. Most of them have at least one missing limb and are covered in blood. But not him. He looks as if he had fallen asleep while holding his bow, waiting for me in the woods as I try to go unnoticed over the fence of our district. ''You're late, Katnip'', he'll mock me with his best smile when I wake him up. I'll clean the soot on his face that's making him look ugly for once, and maybe I'll kiss him quick before we go hunt some fat turkey for supper. I'll pretend that I can't see through the dozens of bullet holes over his chest. I'll pretend the hole in his forehead it's a smashed berry he's pranking me with. Yes, I'll do that.

''That's him'', I hear myself say in a monochord tone. The crow bows their head and we walk two more rows to the left.

I feel bile at the top of my throat when I get to her, although nothing remains recognizable of her. The explosion took both of her arms and half a leg, and fire consumed what was left. I assume the uniform had been white once. The name tag says it's her. I try to remember her blond hair, a little grey now that she was getting to her forties. Blonde like Prim, who was sedated at medical and couldn't say goodbye to her, although she needed it more than me. We had said goodbye to each other a long time ago, I guess. It still revolts my stomach seeing her like that. I'll never tell Prim how scorched skin it's all that remains of her mother.

''It's her'', I confirm to the crow when they discretely clear their throat. I think they whisper some condolences. I think I thank them for caring.

''Miss Everdeen?'', they say. I think they asked me something.

''I'm sorry, what did you say?''

''If is there anything I can do for you'', they patiently repeat, staring at me with neon green eyes. The feathers move a little when their face contorts in a funny expression. I wonder what they're seeing right now.

''Do your feathers grow on you or you apply them?'', I ask them in the same monochord tone I used before. They blush at my question.

''It's... experimental, I implanted peacock mother cells in my follicles. They're supposed to be bright green, but I only got this translucent shade so far''

''They look great'', I tell them. I don't get to hear their response, I leave the improvised morgue before thinking too much of the meaning of the word.

The next day they take me to the state morgue, the real one, and I see my mother and Gale burn in chrome ovens. An hour later they hand me two little marble jars with their ashes and bronze medals recognizing their heroism in battle.

Devastation is still all I'm able to feel.

* * *

A week later they ask us to attend president Snow's execution. It's the first day Prim is able to stay awake for more than ten minutes without having a panic attack, so I decide to stay with her at the hospital. Finnick does the same. Not that he's making many decisions lately, he quietly follow any of us around in an attempt to find a reason to keep living, I guess.

I'd do the same if Peeta or Gale had killed themselves over a misguided rumor of me dying as I was in battle. My mother had found the body. They say she was carrying. It doesn't really matter anymore.

Peeta comes visit us around noon. It's done, he says. Apparently, president Coin's intention was that I shot the arrow that would end the war, but due to my absence she contented herself offering the honor to commander Paylor. She declared herself interim president of Panem after a moving speech that convinced the most reluctant that she was the good guy, Peeta tells us. The irony in his voice doesn't go unnoticed, but none of us has the strength to laugh.

Haymitch comes later. We should be able to go home in a few weeks when things get straight, he says.

Things don't get straight. President Coin's body is found in her bed two weeks after her assumption with an arrow in her head. I'm told this as they arrest me for murder and try to figure out how I did it. I explain a thousand times that I haven't seen my bow and arrows since the day of the bombing and that we moved from the mansion weeks ago, but they don't seem to care what a mad girl has to say. Little do they know it'd be a relief being executed right now, but I keep trying to prove I'm innocent for Prim's sake. She wouldn't bear one more loss right now.

Three days later a district 11 rebel confesses she broke into the armory of the presidential mansion and stole my bow so she could frame me for the murder of the president. It seems she never forgave me for being unable to save her brother in the arena of my first games and she didn't trust president Coin for leaving her district unprotected for most of the revolution, so she came up with a plan that took both of us out of the way.

In other circumstances I might have celebrated her guts, but all I care now is that I've been away from Prim for three days and the doctors had to sedate her again so she stopped trying to escape her room to ask my immediate release.

Commander Paylor shows up that very afternoon at my place to inform me I'm free of all charges and the traitor's been executed instead. I don't find the strength to care. Prim has been having nightmares where my name comes up all day. I get no apologies for that. But she might be the only person to give me the answer I've been too coward to hear. I've known for a while.

''It was Coin. She was the one who came up with Prim being the face of the medical propos in the city casket''

She's not the one saying it. I am. She stares at me with her black eyes for a long time. It’s as if she’s trying to offer me any other excuse that explains how my little sister was the only one they took in that ambush. Something that explains how the owners of one of the most secret clubs in the Capitol were able to find her. Just as she's about to leave, she places a hand in my shoulder as we both stare at my fourteen year old sister curled over herself in the huge feather bed. Most of the surgeries could be reversed, but the implanted breast tissue was now indistinguishable from her own, so they couldn’t risk removing them for something related to puberty I didn't understand. The surgical wounds in the corners of her mouth are now faint scars, and her lips went back to their normal size. She spent three weeks at the main facility of a club for extreme surgeries voyeurs, most of that time under the effect of different substances. The people related to the ambush revealed in the interrogatory that the members of the club are only interested in watching while their guests are being operated, but since Prim was the closest thing to the desirable Mockingjay, they couldn't resist the rest of what they did to her. She'd had been there longer if it wasn’t because the owners were evacuated first with all the important people of the Capitol when the rebels broke into the city’s defenses. She then spent five days imprisoned by peacekeepers at the deepest levels of Snow’s mansion. All the guards involved in the interrogatory would be tried as war criminals, but due to the age of consent being fourteen in the Capitol, there would be no trial for all the rest. Not even for the illegal surgeries. The doctors assured me that it’s unlikely she develops an addiction to painkillers, that she’ll be able to carry out a normal life should she choose to have a partner, and even have children. I’m supposed to feel relieved of getting that information. I scream as I stab a surgeon with their pencil, instead.

Prim mutters my name as a nightmare starts to shake her, and the commander leaves without a word.

* * *

We’ve been living in a temporary new home for a few weeks now, while they finish trying all the war criminals. It’s an empty flat two blocks away from the presidential palace. I wonder if one of our bombs left it empty. No one knows very well what to do with us, but we're not demanding. We are four people too damaged to want for anything else than being fed and left alone.

Prim is usually quiet. I haven't heard her put more than three words together since she left the hospital. At least they were right about painkillers. She eats, she sleeps, she bathes sometimes, she has nightmares all the time. Little more. One day I try to lay by her side and hold her as I always did when she was a baby. But when I do, she wakes up screaming and trying to get away from me, so I stop trying after not too long. She apologizes, I tell her not to worry. Her nightmares don't go away. Nor do mine.

I start to grasp the idea that I'll never be able to save her.

Days go by with news I don't really care about. Paylor is elected as president. Industries reactivate. Executions. New laws. Wealth redistribution. Haymitch gets sober, he keeps talking about district 2. Finnick sometimes ties a complicated knot with blue string and he gives it to Prim. She always grabs it and keeps it under her pillow. She keeps all of them.

Peeta spends most of his time with us in Prim’s room. He tells us the news when we ignore the tv, he bakes for us. He bakes cookies with yellow frosting for Prim. Sometimes he brings a book and he reads for us. I take advantage of those little moments. I remember how I was once mesmerized by his long lashes, so I spend long hours staring at them when he reads. I focus on his voice, mostly. That sound is soothing as few things in life are, and I avoid imagining a world where I lost that sweet whisper. Such a thing it’s unthinkable.

Whenever he lifts his eyes to me I don’t avoid his stare. Even though I know he’s still struggling with reality and what he feels about me, he doesn’t look at me as if I was a threat anymore. Whenever he’s close to do it, he asks me if I’m his enemy. It breaks my heart every time, but I remind him I’m not as many times as he needs. I'm too scared to ask him how he manages to stay whole when I fear I might fall apart any second.

''I think I remember hope'', he suddenly says one day after many hours seated in silence by the window where snow had been falling all day. A shadow of the old baker boy appears on his relaxed brow. I raise my head from my cup of tea. Finnick softens his grip on the string.

''It's what makes us want to become better today than we were yesterday. Real or not real?''

Prim comes out of the bathroom with her golden hair wet and braided. She's wearing clean clothes for the first time in weeks. The loose shirt hides most of the swelling of her chest.

''I remember it too, Peeta. So it must be real'', she says with a sweet voice I thought I'd never hear again.

That sound breaks all of the walls that kept me together. I burst into violent tears as Peeta holds me, as Finnick holds my hands, as Prim herself stands next to me and fondles my hair.

I allow myself remembering hope.

* * *

A day like any other, Haymitch comes over to tell us the trials are over. We can go home now.

We’re given a huge pile of empty boxes and we wonder if we are really allowed to take everything we have in this flat. It’s not a long doubt, really. Neither of us bonded enough with these walls to want to keep something, so we don’t take much. In my box I only take Gale and mom’s jars, a porcelain tea set and an acrylic sculpture of a wave I find out it’s a jar for cookies when the lid falls and cracks a little. I fill it with the cookies Peeta made this morning.

Before we go we’re taken to the presidential mansion where they ask us to wear ridiculous expensive clothes and take lunch with the high command. Prim has a panic attack when she realizes the dress she’s given is tight and a has a low neckline, so she’s excused. I want to kill every single one of them for the whole thirty minutes I stand being there eating expensive ridiculous food while my sister is sedated at some room in that huge mansion. Despite the scene I make when I stand up and leave before desert, I’m still given tons of expensive farewell presents and medals, statues and more medals. Haymitch seems pleased with the amount of wine he’s getting. Finnick and Peeta are faking smiles for all of us. I’m sick of the mockingjay everywhere. When she approaches to hand me the last acknowledgment, I try to find something in president Paylor’s eyes that reassures me she doesn’t want this show more than me, that it’s only pantomime to strengthen alliances between the new government and the Capitol most powerful citizens who won’t bow to anyone unless they’re given not less than four courses. I don’t find enough to convince me. It’s a pity that president Snow is dead, I’m sure he’d appreciate that I finally get it.

Effie Trinket takes us to the station, in a twisted reminiscence of our time as victors. She hugs Peeta and me really tight, as if she cared that this is probably the last time we see each other. Maybe she does care, I concede as I notice the thick tears in her eyes. One look at Peeta tells me we’re trying to feel nostalgic about it, but we can’t when Prim is still too drugged to walk and Finnick is the only one fit to carry her to the train.

As some agents help us put our things away, I notice Haymitch stays a little behind. He’s fondling Effie’s cheek. I remember they gave Peeta and I as much privacy as they could spare, so I pay them the same courtesy. Or maybe I just don’t want to add their names to the list of people whose lives ended up miserable for the war I caused. For a long time I don’t notice Finnick behind me paying all his attention to the scene.

“Haymitch”, he calls.There’s a strange fire in his eyes. “Don’t be a fool”, he continues, “it ends so quickly, you know. Don’t waste a second longer, not when you finally earned yourself some peace”

His words are fierce, and the pain in them is unbearable. It’s the first time we hear him recognize Annie’s death out loud. Haymitch holds Effie closer as she bursts into tears.

“I’ll look after them”, Finnick promises. Haymitch doubts for only a heartbeat. He strides towards Finnick and they embrace for a long time. It’s farewell, but also gratitude. And condolences. Just as they’re breaking apart, Peeta jumps from the train and he embraces Haymitch as well. It’s shorter than Finnick’s, but it’s a long, heartfelt embrace. Haymitch is smiling as he pats his cheek.

And then it’s my turn. I wish none of them had said goodbye, because now it’s my turn and I just want to turn around and pretend I never saw them in that station. Denial threatens to break me in half if I can’t hold my last weak wall. Haymitch stares at me with his grey eyes; the eyes of the Seam. It’s Effie who finally breaks me. Because she’s not wearing a wig, I find out her hair is ash blond. Before realizing what I’m doing, I run to them and I end up crying in Haymitch’s shoulder as they both hold me tight. I feel Peeta’s hand clutch mine at some point. Finnick’s hand in my shoulder. They lovingly hold me as I pour out the weight of my loss, a weight I’ll probably carry with me until I stop breathing.

I see a dizzy Prim staring at the scene through a window when I finally stop. Her beautiful face is blank and almost bored. She turns away, and I don’t judge her. I can’t judge her for leaving me alone in this storm. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to judge her for anything she does in her life from now on. But I’m able to wait for her, and I’ll be there to keep her safe from the storm. As I always did.

I look at the small dots in the station until the train takes a curve and they stay behind a mountain in the Capitol.

* * *

Finnick is not going back to district 4. I understand why he can’t, there’s nothing left for him there. I get the absurd occurrence that he’ll get bored at Twelve, we don’t have an ocean or luxuries, but then again why would he want any of that? He’s been wandering around the train doing and undoing his knots all afternoon, so far we only met for afternoon tea.

Prim is still slightly dizzy for the sedative, but under the doze I notice something else. She’s frowning.

“I guess there’s no lunch for me today”, she says as she grabs a handful of cheese buns. We’re all surprised at her bitter tone.

“We can get you something more if you want, Prim”, Peeta assures her. She breaks the bread with her hands and stuffs it with blueberries and more cheese. She has a scary ironic smile.

“Oh, really? Do I get lunch even though I didn’t get a medal of valor? A three hour nap and lunch, It must be my lucky day”

She is angry. I don’t think I ever saw her angry at anything, and knowing I’m the one causing it makes everything worse. She got drugged for a damn lunch she was forced to attend because I was getting dozens of medals for a war that harmed her directly. When I attempt grabbing her hand, she purposefully moves it aside. The frown doesn’t disappear.

“Make sure she gets as much food as she wants”, I say before I break in front of everyone. I manage to get to the last wagon, a living room with a glass roof, and I curl in a ball in the floor as the clear blue sky turns to lilac, purple and black over my head. Stars appear, I get a glimpse on the moon through the trees, but nothing seems to matter anymore.

Maybe if my mother was here she’d laugh at Prim being a teenager. Maybe she’d make her apologize and after some hours Prim would come to my room asking me if I want to share some hot chocolate. I’d apologize for dragging her to that stupid lunch and we’d laugh at the stupid clothes some of the high ranks of the Capitol wore. Maybe I’d even ask her why she seems the only girl I know who seems immune to Finnick Odair. I can see her blushing and telling me it’s unfair thinking of Finnick that way, that he’s recovering from war too. She’d ask me what Peeta and I are going to do now that the war is over. I’d blush harder than her and I’d deviate the conversation to something I can actually talk about.

But my mother died trying to rescue Prim from rich bastards who cut her to pieces and she will never fully recover from it. Prim doesn’t get to be a teenager, she gets to live with trauma and blame me for starting a war that I was too stubborn to stop when I could’ve, and that got her orphaned and damaged beyond repair. And I can’t blame her. But I wonder what’s the point of saving her if she’ll live to regret that she didn’t die in the explosion that killed Gale.

Maybe I’m wondering the same about me.

I’m forced to live with the choices I made, and I get to live to be hated by the only person in this world who always loved me unconditionally.

I get to regret being alive.

* * *

When the wagon gets too cold I somehow drag myself to the only place where I expect some kind of welcome. After all, every night I spent in this train was surrounded by his arms. He’s awake when I enter without knocking, not expecting me, but not surprised either. He’s using his arm as a pillow, and I’m not sure how he’s not freezing since he’s half naked. The sight of his body covered in scars makes my chest ache more than anything Prim could ever do to me. I get rid of my uncomfortable dress and I slip under the covers, unable to face him. I notice his tension and his deep breath, I can hear him decide if he can trust me. He decides he can, apparently. He leans his broad chest on my back and he surrounds my waist. Like the first time we did this, I feel he could break me in half if he wanted. And he does by whispering five words in my ear.

“We conceived our child here”

He doesn’t ask if it’s real or not. He doesn’t have to, since no one but us knew when it happened. It sounds like he has been through a hard battle with himself in order to say it out loud. I feel a lump in my throat, but I don’t really have an answer for that. What I have are flashbacks.

A lifetime ago, the doctors board at Thirteen let me into Peeta’s room as they explain him that the baby had been real all along. They hand him pictures of my body showing the telltale signs of darker nipples and a clear line going from my navel to my pubic bone. They show him footage of the same signs when I get rid of my shredded suit in the arena and I replace it with the suit that belonged to the morphling. The ultrasound where there’s a dot that could be anything. They mention words like detached placenta, absence of heartbeat, six weeks, spontaneous abortion. All I can think of is that what came out of me when I started feeling the horrible pain didn’t look human. How I didn’t find the heart they made me hear when I didn’t believe them at first. All I hear is how I lost something I was never given the option to want. Peeta only has eyes for my reaction during the whole explanation.

“If this is real, I’m sorry you had to go through that. It sounds lonely”, he says. I don’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he hurt me worse than when he tried to kill me with his bare hands. I escape the room and curl myself in my usual pipe until I pass out. I realize that Peeta also lost his choice of wanting what I lost. What we lost. He doesn’t get to mourn the loss of a future that belonged to us, and I don't have the words for such a pain. I don’t need to say anything to know he’s thinking of those words.

It gets harder keeping my thoughts together when Peeta starts moving his hand from my stomach upwards, to my chest, and later to my thighs. Maybe he doesn’t want me to think at all. I feel, instead. I feel his lips on my neck, and his strong legs tangle with mine. I feel his warm skin over mine, and I feel a long lost hunger driving me closer to him.

He fills me with his warmth, and I don’t longer want to mourn the future we lost. I find the hope of a future in his gentle, thorough hands that could break me, but they don’t. They keep me together. As I whisper his name, I feel alive again.

* * *

We are ready to meet again with the ashes and the presence of death in every stone. We are not ready to find a new beginning. People came back as soon as we won the war, and labor is their way of starting over. We recognize most of our old neighbours, and some of the residents of Thirteen. They greet us with joy, but we are not ready yet. I feel relieved of not having to face Gale's mother today.

We go back to Victor’s Village. Of the three houses that remain standing, mine is the one in better shape, but none of us feel like we belong in a place where my mother should’ve been laughing, cooking and making remedies with herbs. Prim doesn’t even get to the kitchen, so when a neighbour from Thirteen passes by to leave us a box with our belongings, she sits at the bottom of the staircase clutching our parents' wedding picture until we decide we got enough supplies from the house. Wearing my father's jacket again feels like the hug I need but Prim won't give me.

The cleaning of Haymitch’s old house takes us three whole days. We make sure to leave an empty room, just in case. We unpack our few belongings as soon as we feel the house is clean enough. I place my mother’s ashes on the fireplace, where the weight of the marble holds the few books that Peeta brought. I place the old frame where my parents smile at me as if war had never broken me. I put the wave jar on the kitchen table, and the sun reflects its curves so the whole table looks like it’s underwater. I see Finnick touch it with gentle admiration. I decide we should get a blue tablecloth. Most of the expensive presents end up unwrapped in the attic, except one from Cressida with just a little note sticked to a leather cover I know very well. "He won the bet, didn't he?", she wrote. I take Cinna's book to my old house, where it stays on the closet with all the others design books and dresses he made for me.

I grab the other jar and I go all the way to the lake. Finnick follows me, and I don’t stop him. I find my destination as I did thousands of times before. The little cabin never knew there was a war, everything remains the same except for a little blade of grass that broke through the stone of the fireplace. One day nature will reclaim again this place, but it will always be ours. I leave the jar and the medal recognizing Gale Hawthorne’s valor in battle and thanking him for his courageous sacrifice for the cause. I also leave a knife and a bow I retrieved from a hollow tree on my way here. I don’t have a picture of him. But Finnick has one of his grass nets, and he brought a little water. He pours it over the blade of grass and he leaves the grass cup next to the jar.

“I’ll make sure he has flowers someday”, he explains. I don’t have any words to thank him.

“You should make a net for next time”, I tell him instead. He smiles a little at the idea of having a plan.

We bring home some rabbits and a turkey. Peeta makes us a stew we repeat twice. Finnick makes his net, and we have fish for a whole week. When he learns enough about baking, he makes us a fish pie that puts the Capitol feasts to shame. He makes me promise I’ll teach him how to hunt. He brings his first turkey home after a month.

When spring comes, Peeta asks the help of some citizens to remove the ruble from the village, and when they break the foundations they find rich soil. He plants an orchard he tends to everyday. Finnick starts spending time there, too. He oversees the harvest in summer, and he sometimes gets new seeds. He’s starting to recover that golden glow of his after so many days under the sunlight. One day he brings a little bulb home and he plants it in a flower pot under Prim’s window. We catch her caressing the yellow primrose petals a few days later, so Finnick doesn’t stop bringing new primroses after that. When they don’t bloom anymore, Peeta paints her a canvas. She hangs it over her bed. One day Finnick is sweeping and Prim forgot to close her room’s door, so he catches a glimpse of another golden frame where Prim pinned every knot Finnick have her as she recovered in the Capitol. I think it brings out a genuine smile on his face. I see him make a huge effort to learn how to bake Prim's favourite frosted cookies. He's terrible at frosting but they taste the same, so Prim smiles.

By fall, I’m the only one who hasn’t made Prim smile yet. I try not to take it personally, but since I haven’t given up on trying to save her, it makes me feel like I’m failing. So I spend a lot of time in the woods, where I’m away from her frowns and her silences even though I promised I wouldn’t judge her for hating me. I still don’t. I am, however, judging that awful scrawny cat that’s staring me from across the fallen tree I’m sitting on right now. How did he manage to survive and how did he find me are answers I’ll never get, because I only care how I’ll take him home. I stand. He snorts at me. I don’t care he’s offended.

“Prim’s alive”, I inform him. He seems to remember that name, after all. He meows as a helpless kitten and I cannot help the bitter laugh that bursts out of me. My last chance of repairing my bond with my sister is a starving animal who hates me as much as I hate him.

I find Prim reading by the fireplace as Finnick helps Peeta cut some onions fore supper. She's barely interested in me being there, but some curiosity crosses her face when I kneel by her side and a loud meow comes out of my bag. Her eyes open wide as I take Buttercup out of the bag and I offer him to Prim. Her big blue eyes hesitate to reveal the sheer joy that's filling her. She stands up and holds Buttercup like a baby in the air, spinning with him a few times. When she's done spinning she holds the beast like a teddy bear, and he meows at her in a little voice. Prim laughs a little.

"So you've been having some rough couple of days, huh? Yeah, me too. I promise it gets better", she murmurs Buttercup in a sweet voice.

There's a genuine smile on her face. And she's staring directly at me.

She offers me a mug of hot chocolate before going to bed that night.

* * *

We have to wait until winter, but when the first snow starts falling we’re blessed with the gift of Finnick’s laughter.

“I never got snow back at Four”, he explains us as he catches some loose snowflakes revolving around his flushed cheeks. Now that he can run again for fun and not for survival, a very fat Buttercup sprints past Finnick and it makes him lose balance. Once he's done laughing at his clumsiness, he spends most of the afternoon chasing Buttercup in the snow. Peeta and I pass on the chance of chasing the foul beast, but Prim has all the time in the world. When she catches a cold after spendind the whole afternoon covered in snow, Finnick feels guilty and he makes her cups of hot tea for a few days. They spend days talking about the snow, about Buttercup, about some poetry book they both read days ago. Prim is clever, and Finnick remembers how he used to have an easy laughter. Prim tries to hide the blush whenever Finnick laughs, but no woman is immune to Finnick Odair laughing. And as hard as it's for me, she's well on her way of becoming one.

I see my little sister turn sixteen. Her face holds on to a little trace of that childish roundness, at least she hasn't lost her dimples. She’s growing taller, I can almost see the top of her head from the kitchen window when she takes her morning walk among the endless rows of sunflowers; by next summer I'm sure I'll be able to see her forehead. She still hasn't recovered the easy conversation, but her frown almost disappeared. She's fond of gardening now, or maybe she's just fond of Finnick, who spends hours and hours planting yellow flowers for her. Seeing them return together from the orchard with their arms and faces covered in dirt and carrying potato sacks is a strange healing balm for me, and I don't even have to worry about Finnick being ten years older than Prim. Seeing how they move around each other, all those blue knots over Prim's bed make sense. I guess they always did, but the idea that not only my sister but also one of my only friends lived to feel in the flesh the abuse of the Capitol for as long as they may live was too unbearable for me at the moment. It still is, but I see now they are not alone with their memories. They have each other. And I don't ever have to worry for any of them being abused anymore.

One day, Peeta and I wake up early from a nightmare I had, and when we go the kitchen for tea we get a glimpse through Prim's open door, where she slept with her open book on her lap. Finnick is sleeping in an armchair next to the bed, he put his feet on the matress and his blanket is covering Prim's feet, too. They're sleeping with their hands laced together. Peacefully.

"How I wish we had a camera", Peeta whispers in my ear.

He draws the scene in a small piece of paper and he gives it to me. My face hurts for smiling so much.

* * *

Prim turns seventeen. I see her forehead from the kitchen when she walks past the sunflowers in the morning. Peeta is trying to teach her how to cook, but she's turning out to be a true enemy of the kitchen. But I notice she has a certain eye for fitting her clothes, so I go back to my old house and I retrieve Cinna's books. When I give them to her, it's like a fire ignites in Prim. She retrieves all the dresses, and when after a few tries she makes a silk shirt out of one of them, it's like Cinna is alive again. The deep back she desings for the shirt shows the scars in her back, but she doesn't seem to care. She fills her room with designs and more designs. Her tailoring is magnificent, and her knitting even more. I wish Cinna could see what she's able to do with a piece of dull cloth. We spend long hours talking about him now, keeping his memory alive. Finnick seems to be getting a new sweater every week now, but I don't see him complaining. Prim seems to know exactly what he likes wearing, after all, she has stopped faking she doesn't look at him a long time ago.

"He's beautiful", Prim tells me one afternoon as she plucks the feathers of the turkey I brought home for supper. I can see Finnick with his copper locks tied in a messy bun as he jokes with Peeta about some sweet potatoes. Now that's he's closer to his thirties, Finnick is letting his hair grow a lot, and a beard too. I wholeheartedly agree with Prim.

"It took you long enough", I tease her. She chuckles.

"I always thought he was, but I didn't think it was fair for him. It's different now", she says. There's a serene expression in her face, but her eyes shine like diamonds. That's how I know what she means.

"Is he... good to you?", I ask her. She blushes a little.

"He's... patient. I'm still trying to feel comfortable. But he's patient", she says with a smile. "What about Peeta? Is he good to you?"

"We're really having this conversation, huh?", I tell her as I furiously blush. "He's good. Really good. I feel... good with him"

"I can tell", Prim says going back to the turkey, "you're pregnant, right?"

She's right, but not for long. I wake up a week later with those terrible pains again, but this time Peeta stays with me through the agony. And after I'm recovered, we start trying again to have the child we now know we want.

The conversation goes on with the months, as much strange as it is for me having it with Prim.

"He's gentle", she tells me one day.

"He's so generous", it becomes later.

"He makes me feel alive", she confesses one day.

"I know exactly what you mean", I tell her.

She's absentmindedly rubbing her still flat belly as he tells me that. I see it grow with the seasons. She's born in spring, only days before Prim's nineteenth birthday. She's got Prim's blue eyes, and Finnick's copper hair. They call her Annie. When she's one week old we take her to the lake for a ceremony that Finnick tells us it's tradition in his district. They both enter naked in the water as Finnick cradles his daughter inside the water and he sings a beautiful song about a father being the waves carrying her gently to the shore as she learns how to sail her boat. We don't have a tradition in Twelve, but when Prim and Finnick enter our home holding their daughter and they share each other bread by the fireplace, we know they won't stay much longer.

They move to town when Annie is three months old. Buttercup goes with them. Finnick asked Peeta to be his partner in the new bakery he's opening, and Peeta is delighted. Prim opens a tailor shop in the garage of her new house, so I drop by very often to see her new creations. Or that's what I tell her, truth is that I miss her everyday and I still have trouble accepting that she's grown past me and has her own family now. Annie's not an only child for long. A green eyed boy called Cinna follows. A grey eyed girl called Mags. Baby Gale. I feel like there's more and more kids every time I go to see Prim, I don't remember how she looked without a big belly and a baby on her hip.

I envy her more than I dare to speak out loud, even though is not fair. Peeta and I have been trying for years now, and every time we believe they're staying in my womb, they don't. I've lost track of how many we've lost so far, and I'm starting to give up.

One day Prim comes home for a visit in winter. She's bringing Annie and baby Gale, whose teeth are coming out and he's moody. Annie is the best behaved girl in the world, and she's fond of sitting in the floor and resting her head in my lap. Except today she has her head on my belly, and she's paying attention. After one of my miscarriages she got too upset and Prim and I decided not telling her should I become pregnant again. So she lets out a muffled cry when she feels what I felt too.

"Auntie Kat, you didn't tell me you were having a baby!", she tells me with a huge smile. She climbs to my chair to hug me carefully as I look at Prim, who didn't know either and I know she's thinking what I'm thinking. For how long will I be pregnant this time? How long do I get to keep my child in me?

* * *

She stays inside of me for a long time. Long enough to feel her move again and again, so much she doesn't let me sleep. She gets heavy inside of me, and I feel tired. I have recurrent nightmares about losing her. But when I feel the pains again, it's her letting me know she's ready to come out. So she breaks through my body and I get to know her. I get to hold her in my arms, and I see her sleep in Peeta's arms.

And I think it's all I could ever ask for, but he decides he wants to come too. I'm braiding my daughter's hair to go to Annie's tenth birthday when I feel him move inside me for the first time. It's a good thing we're at a party already. It's easier carrying him because it feels just like it did when I carried her, and when he lets me know it's his time, I greet the pains with joy. Holding him is a blessing I never dared asking. There are many blessings in my life I never dared asking.

Annie asks for a big picnic party when she turns twelve. We can't refuse her, so the two families carry our baskets and we go to the meadow. Prim is pregnant with her sixth child, so she can't move a lot. I see Finnick by her side showing wrinkles in his eyes when he laughs at his children running each other with mud balls, but I know he's thinking what I'm thinking. What Peeta is thinking. Annie's name would've been in the Reaping for the first time this year, but it's not. None of our children will never know in their flesh the horrors we lived. But they're still gonna know. Long ago, when Annie was still safe in Prim's womb, we came up with a pact. Whenever one of them is old enough to understand, we sit with them and we explain them there was once a cruel world that tried to break all of us, but we decided to fight for a better world for them, and we won. Annie was the first to know. Cinna followed not long after. I fear the day we have to tell my children, who've been born not to one but two former Victors. How I'll be able to explain them that I make their breakfast with the hands that killed hundreds of people? How I'll be able to explain them that after so many years I still have nightmares, and so does their father?

My son's laughter breaks through my dark thoughts. His mud ball landed on Peeta's leg, so now all the kids are turning to him. He's laughing in the floor as six childen cover him in mud, and it brings out a smile in me. I fought for a better world for all of them, a world where they will never know hunger, war and loss, and that's all that matters. Of course I'll be able to explain all the things we did to make sure they came into a world where life is worth living.

Because in the end, hope makes us do better today than we did yesterday.

I try to do it everyday.

And I'll always keep trying.

**Author's Note:**

> If you got his far, thank you! I've been a fan of this trilogy for a decade and I never dared writing about it, until last week when I was taking a shower and I was like WHAT IF FINNICK LIVED AND HAD BABIES WITH PRIM and after I finished crying I went straight to my desk and started writing. I'm seriously pleased with what I came up with, I hope you guys liked it! Kudos and feedback are very much appreciated, it's my first time writing in first person as well and I'd like to know how I did!


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